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Hi

I’ve noticed that some IELTS candidates I work with can get the words ‘energy‘ and ‘power‘ mixed up. As you probably know, in some cases either of these two words can be used (e.g. ‘nuclear power/energy’) but do you know when to use one and not the other?

To give you some examples of how ‘energy’ and ‘power’ are used differently, I had another look at how these words were used in the articles I recommended in my post ‘Think green for your IELTS test‘.

Government departments and positions:

• the Department of Energy and Climate Change
• the energy minister

Types of energy:

• renewable energy
• clean energy

A verb meaning to supply energy:

• …designed to power buildings
• …keep powering essential systems

An adjective:

• hydrogen-powered vehicles

A noun meaning effort and enthusiasm:

• …there’s so much time and energy going into…

I guess if you’re reading this, you must be putting a lot of energy into your IELTS preparation.

Keep it up.

Pete

PS ‘Energy’ is on the Academic Word List.

Related Posts:

1. Think ‘green’ for your IELTS test
2. The Academic Word List

Tags: Academic word list, IELTS reading, Vocabulary for IELTS